a thousand shattering promises
by katherinegrace79
Summary: He had made a promise to himself when he had been too young to understand what that promise was. Now time was beginning to run out. The Time War was raging and soon, too soon, the Doctor would have to decide whether to keep that promise or to shatter it.


**Disclaimer: **If I owned Doctor Who, I would not work in a shop for minimum wage. Ergo, I do not own Doctor Who. Nor the works of Robert Fanney or Jack Prelutsky. Go figure.

* * *

"_I do the very best I know how – the very best I can;_

_and I mean to keep on doing so until the end."_

_**Abraham Lincoln**_

* * *

_Reverse the polarity_

_need to R-U-N_

_everything burns_

_and everything dies _**screaming_._**

_Master –_

– _rips in the universe, gaping, Hell within –_

_no escape_

_want to go home_

* * *

"Tea?"

The Doctor raised his head from the cold surface of the presidential window. He had been watching the soldiers outside as they had been released from their battle tactics seminar, spilling out onto the lawn in front of the presidential building. They were dressed in the deep red of battle ready soldiers, although none of them were more than children. He sighed and looked over his shoulder. Romana stood at his side, a cup of tea extended towards him. His lips quirked at the cup. It had been a silly souvenir he had plucked from a tourist stand in 20th century London on her first visit there. He was somewhat surprised that she had been sentimental enough to keep it, rather than letting it roll around in the depths of his TARDIS.

His eyes flickered up to her face. She looked tired and worn now. Gone was the youthful pull of her face, the free elasticity of her movement and her blonde hair was now a commanding, steel grey. She _looked _500 years old now.

He took the cup and murmured his gratitude, both for the tea and for her lack of comment regarding the trembling in his hands. He clenched his free hand against his thigh to stop his hand from shaking, feigning non-nonchalance as he sipped the hot liquid and felt the immediate effect of a good cup of tea on his ravaged system. He didn't dare close his eyes and enjoy the sensation for fear that he would be transported back to the front lines where everything had been burning and he had lost a part of his history – lost his chance to put things right with his oldest friend and oldest enemy.

Romana shifted, toeing out of her shoes and kicking them to one side before she joined him on the window seat, curling her long legs beneath her, almost looking like the girl she had once been. Her robes – the warmest, most expensive red cotton silk that could be made on Gallifrey – fell around her, gathering at her knees when she pulled them up so as to curl her legs. She was wearing stockings. The Doctor allowed himself to be briefly distracted by the sheer pull of soft material up her legs, wondering how her legs would feel if he ran his palms up the lengths of her calves and onto her thighs.

"I haven't been able to leave Gallifrey in so long. I am running quite low on my supplies of Earth tea." Romana informed him, eyeing him over the rim of her cup, a curl of grey hair falling across her forehead.

"Can't beat a good cup of PG Tips." The Doctor replied, voice quiet, eyes drifting back to the soldiers – a new group whom would soon be finished with training and be assigned to various Battle TARDISes. They would most likely be dead within the decade. "It's the tannins, you know."

"Quite."

The Doctor rested his temple against the cool, hand spun glass. He had come to Romana for a reason, visited her when he had not seen her in so long (_too long, she had reminded him when she had seen him in her chair)_. He couldn't bring himself to break their silence yet, enjoying being with someone who had no demands for him. He pulled his eyes from the soldiers and the timelines that were twisting shortly around them (_no adventures in time and space for them)_ to rest on his friend. Romana looked as though she was barely holding herself together and he thought of the old patchwork dolls that Susan had taken a fancy to when she had been a girl. She looked _old_ and tired. He doubted he looked much better though. "Rassilon wants me to lead the fleet into the Kolox Nebula."

Romana's eyes flickered and the line of her jaw visibly hardened. Her fingers tightened around her cup of tea, thumb twitching. "Rassilon and I disagree on a great many issues. Your participation included." She held her tea with one hand and reached for his. Her skin was hot from the tea, her grip strong. "You are not a warrior, Doctor."

He felt a spark of his old self rear up at her words before it died as quickly as it had come. He squeezed her fingers. "Neither are you, Madam President."

"Sometimes..." Romana began before trailing off with a soft sigh. He waited patiently. For her, he would always wait. "Sometimes I think I need to be. This war will not be won by my soft heart –"

"Romana –" the Doctor frowned, tugging on her hand gently so that she sat up straight. He also sat up, their knees bumping, and it was like they were young again, sitting up in bed, arguing and discussing and _loving_ each other so much that it felt like sunshine and eternity and _how could it ever end?_ "You are a great leader. Rassilon's return –"

She scoffed, her face twisting with anger and bitterness. "Rassilon's return..."

"It does not speak ill to you." The Doctor told her, voice deep and serious because she needed to understand. "The Council didn't bring him back because they don't have faith in you. They brought him back for his knowledge."

"So I have been told." Romana replied, blinking away the expression that had gripped her face but remnants of it remained. "You think I don't know what he calls me? The _War Queen, _as though it is a title I should honour above that of Lady President."

"The people will follow you, Romana."

"The people will have little choice." She said, eyes dancing away from his, fingers shaking in his grip. "I am the leader that you have."

Her voice grew hoarse for a long moment before she cleared her throat. Her eyes blurred with tears. He hurriedly reached out and set their teas down before taking her into his arms, cradling her close. She tucked her head into the crook of his neck, arms around his back, fingers dug into the back of his waistcoat. "I am so tired, Doctor. I can feel it. I don't have long with this body left. I am exhausting it day by day."

"You'll regenerate." The Doctor assured her, speaking into her flowery scented hair. He smoothed a hand down her back, thumb ghosting across the bumps of her spine that were evident beneath his touch.

She raised her head, tears glittering on her cheeks. "I'll regenerate into someone different."

Confusion and then understanding swept through him. "Romana –"

"Ssh." Romana murmured, fingers pressed against his lips, dark eyes flickering over his face, memorising him, memorising the moment. She shifted. Her thigh bumped his knee. "Just – remember."

Entranced and afraid, he brushed the curl from her forehead and lingered his fingers on the soft curve of her cheek. "Remember what?"

"Me. The Master. _Everything_." Romana whispered before she kissed him and the Doctor gripped her close to him, afraid to let her go as she bore him back.

* * *

**I can hear your whisper**

_There is too much blood._

_Romana's black hair spills across the floor, her blood matting it._

**I can hear your distant mutter**

_Green eyes, dead._

_Someone is screaming._

**I can smell your damp on the breeze**

_Oh._

_Doctor._

**Storm, I know you are coming**

* * *

"The Dalek Emperor has control of the Cruciform."

The silence was pure, deadly.

A hand smoothed across the polish of the table.

"Is this verified?"

"It is the last report that the Master made before – before we lost contact with his Bowship."

Rassilon raised his eyes from the smooth surface of the table and swept the council room. The attendants were sitting around the table, having fallen into place following the Lady President's death – unfortunate but barely a concern for him. Her new regeneration had been fiercer, lacking the softness that had been so damning, but it hadn't been enough to save her, to save Gallifrey. His eyes moved to the corner where the Doctor was leaning, shadowed by the curved structure of the room, looking as though he was bored by the proceedings, his heel beating a pulse against the wall, waiting until he could leave.

_Gallifrey's most famous son_.

Rassilon would have snorted his disdain had it not been such an indecorous act.

The Doctor was a child – foolish and impatient – his could-be brilliant mind filled with the desire to flee and to interfere with lesser species, befriending them. The very idea filled Rassilon with a sick rage at the thought of a Time Lord sullying himself with a lesser species, caring for them and giving them the keys to all of time and space as though it was nothing more than cheap show at a fair. It was unbecoming of a son of Gallifrey and Rassilon had very little time for him. However, he was proving to be a rather adept soldier and _that_ was what Gallifrey needed. Romana had understood that. In time, so would the Doctor.

"Redeploy the Corsair's fleet to encircle the Cruciform." Rassilon ordered and the pieces on the board shifted at his words, millions of Gallifrey's children moving to surround the Dalek Emperor and the Horde of Travesties – an alliance that had struck a heavy blow for Gallifrey.

Not that it would last long.

The Daleks did not play well with others.

The Doctor leaned against the wall, tuning out the powerful discussions of the High Council, the ache at the base of his skull more pressing than it had been before. The Master was dead _(and so was Romana but no, don't think about her)._ He knew it in his bones, ancient and brittle though they were becoming. His once upon a time friend had died somewhere on the front lines, yet another casualty lost to the never ending war. He closed his eyes and remembered the last time he had seen the Master. They had passed briefly in the vast corridors of the Citadel, passing on their ways to different meetings. Their eyes had met and the Master's lips had curled up into a smirk (_look at me, Theta, I'm still here)_, light eyes gleaming but there had been exhaustion etched onto his face, an exhaustion that surely was reflected on the Doctor's own.

The animosity between them had still been there – too much had passed between them to ever return to the easy friendship of their childhood – but it had been tempered by the War, by the aching, terrifying need to survive.

"Doctor –"

He tried not to flinch at the name; a name that he had chosen but was fitting less and less well of late. He opened his eyes and looked at Rassilon; Rassilon the Great, Rassilon the Mighty – _Rassilon the Deranged_ the Doctor thought bitterly, a sharp, sour taste in his mouth at the sight of Gallifrey's founding father. His rich red robes resembled the deep spill of blood that soaked into the lines of his palms and the glimmer of shining gold reminided him of hundreds of suns burning up under his touch in an effort to stem the time of Daleks into Gallifrey's territory.

Romana had been right to be wary of Rassilon. She had been tempering him, keeping him in check as best she could, but her death had left a gaping hole in Gallifrey's power structure that Rassilon had filled as surely as darkness would fill an empty space. Gallifrey no longer felt like his home of old. It felt cold, distant, _angry_ and the Doctor knew that Rassilon was to blame for that.

Perhaps he was to blame too.

He hadn't been able to save Romana.

He had been too late.

He was always _too late_.

And he called himself the Doctor.

A grimace spasmed across his face and Rassilon's lips tightened, the tension in the room fluctuated. He appeared to know what the Doctor had tried to hide. A gleam appeared in his dark eyes and anger stirred in the Doctor's stomach. "Take your fleets and head off the the Could've Been King."

Horror crept into his body. He had heard of the Could've Been King – there wasn't a Gallifreyan alive who hadn't. It had ripped apart hundreds of systems with its army of Meanwhiles and Neverweres. Millions of refugees had been left displaced, millions of survivors out of trillions of people whom had been ripped apart at the atomic level due to a fit of angry pique from the Could've Been King.

_In the desolate depths of a perilous place_

_the bogeyman lurks, with a snarl on his face._

The Doctor rubbed his thumb over the front of his pocket watch that he kept tucked into the front pocket of his worn jacket, a gift from Romana in days gone by. Something unravelled slick and sure and _fierce _inside of him. A muscle in his jaw flickered to life, beating a steady pulse against his skin. He held Rassilon's unforgiving eyes. "Davros is rumoured to be in that system."

"Is he?" Rassilon replied, voice as dry as the air in the room and the Doctor pushed away from the wall, barely resisting the urge to choke the life out of Rassilon _again _and_ again _and _again_ until there was nothing left.

_Never dare, never dare to approach his dark lair_

_for he's waiting...just waiting...to get you._

* * *

– _jaws opened wide, Davros_

_let me save you!_

_Close the jaws – fire everything – don't let it_

_please don't_

_Romana. Master. Susan._

_Save me_

* * *

The phone rang again.

The Doctor picked up the receiver and dropped it back down with barely a twitch of his hand as he fiddled with the console, inputting new dates and co-ordinates. He had made himself perfectly clear to Rassilon in the wake of Romana's death and Davros's fate at the jaws of the Nightmare Child (_silly little man, king of the mountain, brilliant and dead)._ He would help out with the war when he could but he was no soldier. There would be no more fighting on the front lines, no more watching thousands of children die under his command.

He was the Doctor.

He had made a promise to himself when he had been too young to understand what that promise was.

_Never cruel or cowardly._

_Never give up, never give in._

He had fled Gallifrey with the jaws of the Nightmare Child open wide and hauting him, Rassilon's words of fury ringing through his skull, Romana's ghost treading in his footsteps, her pale blonde hair of old shimmering beneath the suns. He had run harder and faster than he had ever run before, throwing himself into the universe, desperately wishing that someone would catch him.

There were hundreds of thousands of stars and planets and trillions upon trillions of people whom had never heard the words _Time Lord_, _Dalek, Gallifrey, Skaro_ and he intended on finding them all.

A madman in a blue box –

– he spun through space and time.

"Cleopatra, _my queen_." The Doctor supplicated, eyes drifting from the Queen of Egypt to one of her pretty handmaidens whom resembled Romana strongly.

His hearts beat heavily in his chest.

– _later, he would push the handmaiden away and collapse in the TARDIS, bile burning at his throat, wishing he was man enough to tear the universe apart for Romana –_

He rode with Pancho Villa and accidentally invented the Milcarbian Box Step three centuries too early. It was all too easy to fall into his old routine, escaping his ghosts and escaping the shadows that crept ever outward, except at night. Nothing was easy for him when he needed rest, when his body could no longer ride the demands he placed upon it.

Gallifrey burned in his dreams.

Susan stared gloomily at him from her grave, dark eyes unforgiving and judgemental. _Why didn't you save me, grandfather? Why?_

Romana twirled forever out of his reach, disappearing like smoke before he ever got near her.

Andred weeping over Leela's broken body in the shattered remains of the Citadel.

The Master laughing and laughing and laughing –

He awoke abruptly, his breath choking him, the piercing shrill of the phone gaining in pitch, shattering his roughly frayed nerves. The dark of his bedroom threatened to swallow him whole. _What a fitting end to be consumed by the Vashta Nerada_ the Doctor thought, his mind edged with the desperation and fear that came from the dark. He pushed himself from his bed and he stumbled from his bedroom, clothes rumpled, head pounding, hand smoothing along the walls, allowing himself to feel the TARDIS and draw what comfort he could from her, his one beautiful constant in the universe.

_Don't leave me_ he pleaded to his beloved ship. _Please don't ever leave me._

His fingers curled around the receiver and he yanked it up, pressed it to his ear, opened his mouth to snap at Rassilon or whoever was calling him to demand _more_ –

"_Help me, please. Can anybody help me?"_

The sound of a ship crashing filled his ears, the woman's calm yet panicked voice filling his mind, wrapping around his headache and squashing it, filling his veins with a peaceful calm.

"_Please state the nature of your ailment or injury."_

He could do that. He knew how to do that. It was what he had been doing for centuries. He was the Doctor, after all.

"_I'm not injured, I'm crashing. I don't need a doctor!"_

The Doctor's eyes snapped up.

His lips curled and he slammed the phone down, leaping around the console, energy renewed, his headache fading, curly hair bouncing as he moved. The TARDIS landed heavily inside the crashing ship and he pushed open the door, losing his footing as the ship spun wildly as it twisted dangerously, entering the orbit of the planet that it was going to crash on. He caught himself on the wall, fingertips gripping hold of a groove in the wall, his other hand scrabbling for his sonic screwdriver which he used to fight his way through the automated locked doors.

He could see the woman ahead of him. Her dark brown hair was tied back and she was barely remaining seated, her hands flying across the ship's controls.

"I'm trying to send a distress signal!" The irritated female voice from the distress signal snapped at the ship's computer. "Stop talking about doctors!"

"I'm a doctor." The Doctor said, gratified at the way the young woman spun around, eyes wide and surprised, her hands stilled over her controls. "But probably not the one you're expecting."

* * *

_No more._

_The Doctor – no more._

* * *

Four centuries was a long time to turn a back on an entire life, an entire philosophy.

The old man ran his hands over the stolen box. Dire warnings were etched all over it; deep, serious swirls intended to dissuade any potential user. He rested his palms over the surface of it and closed his eyes, shoulders trembling with the weight of the burden that he had taken upon himself that day on Karn_. Make me a warrior now_. Cass's face remained etched in his memory. The expression of anger and mistrust still able to deliver a solid punch to his chest and steal the breath from him.

_Are you proud of me, Romana?_

_Would you even recognise me, Susan?_

He remained hunched over the box, drawing the moment out, even though he was set in his decision. He allowed himself the punishing luxury of waiting.

Gallifrey would be gone.

His home would be reduced to _nothing_. Not even ash or dust would remain of one of the oldest races in the universe. The Moment would reduce it all to simple non-existence. Not just Gallifrey though. Skaro would also be gone. All of the Daleks that had ever dared to hurt the universe would be erased, as would every single Time Lord that ever was and would be. The entire Time War would end and there would be no one left to remember that people called the Time Lords existed. He thought of the people that he had travelled with over the years – _Ian and Barbara, Jamie, Sarah-Jane, Adric, Peri, Ace, Charley_ – they would never know what would happen to him. He would just be a ghost, a memory, something for them to revisit in their fleeting lives before they too were extinguished and left to fade out of memory.

He drew in a sharp, deep breath and chastised himself for drawing the moment out – the luxury of a foolish old man.

It was time.

_Time Lords of Gallifrey._

_Daleks of Skaro._

_I serve notice on you all._

He shifted on his haunches, moving to kneel in the dusty ground, and he focused his attention on the box, beautiful and devastating. It took him a moment before it hit him. He very nearly laughed when he realised that he had no idea how to activate the weapon. He stared at the box, turning it over, as though expecting the instructions to be written on the side alongside the dire warnings that spoke against using it. He rubbed an aged hand over the back of his heated neck, damp with sweat, grateful that no one was there to witness his idiocy. He had only broken into the cells of Rassilon's tomb to steal the most powerful weapon in all of creation and he had forgotten to pick up the instruction manual.

"Typical." He muttered, exasperated with himself and with the situation. He finished turning the box over in his hands and set it back down on the ground. He rapped it with his knuckles before sighing. "Why is there never a big red button?"

The sound of something moving outside the ramshackle barn had him on his feet in less than a second, the rustling sound of something snuffling around caused his hearts to beat a violent tattoo against his ribcage. He paused, listening closely, trying to hear over the sound of his blood rushing through his ears. He moved swiftly towards the door, long legs covering the distance easily. He curled his fingers around the door handle, leaning close, ear almost but not quite touching the hot metal of the door. He yanked the door open abruptly and half-stepped outside, feet straddling the threshold and he stared out into the vast nothingness of the planet that he was on, the sun nearly blinding him.

"Hello?" The old warrior called out, eyes squinted, sweeping the huge expanse of golden white desert, the distance rippling like waves in the heat. "Is someone there?"

"Don't worry."

He jumped so fiercely that he banged his shoulder blades against the line of the door. Pain lanced through him but he whipped around and stared at the woman inside the decrepit building. She was young, blonde, _pretty_ and she was sitting right on top of the ornate box as though she didn't have a care in the entire universe. Her dark eyes met his astonished ones across the distance between them.

"It's just a wolf."

* * *

_and so on the day that notice was served_

_Gallifrey froze, burning_

_and the Doctor_

_was reborn._


End file.
